• 1 Stefan Roesch, The Experiences of Film Location Tourists (Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2009) (...)
• 2 Visit California homepage. https://www.visitcalifornia.com/road-trips/movie-locations-tour/ <accessed on January 12, 2022>.
• 3 “Back to Bridgerton – 11 filming locations from the hit show,” Visit Britain. https://www.visitbrit (...)
• 4 “Game of Thrones,” Discover Northern Ireland. https://discovernorthernireland.com/things-to-do/tv-a (...)
• 5 “Film Tourism,” Tourism New Zealand. https://www.tourismnewzealand.com/markets-insights/sectors/fil (...)

1In The Experiences of Film Location Tourists, Stefan Roesch mentioned that “film tourism is a specific pattern of tourism that drives visitors to see screened places during or after the production of a feature film or a television production.”1 This trend has now definitely been taken up by different national and local tourism industries: California, home to many Hollywood studios, has of course its own specific internet page dedicated to film/TV tourism,2 and VisitBritain, which had notably highlighted many Harry Potter-themed destinations, now focusses on Back to Bridgerton-11 filming Locations From the Hit Show.3 Discover Northern Ireland has been surfing on the worldwide success of Game of Thrones4 while New Zealand, which welcomed the famed shooting of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, devotes one section to film tourism on Tourism New Zealand.5

• 6 See for example https://www.wbstudiotour.co.uk or https://www.gameofthronesstudiotour.com <accessed on January 12, 2022>.
• 7 « Suivez les traces du Da Vinci Code au cœur de paris », City Breaker. https://city-breaker.com/da- (...)
• 8 Different modifications were then added. CNC, Crédit d’impôt international, https://www.cnc.fr/prof (...)
• 9 Variety Staff, “France, Capital of Film, Provides 30% Rebate to Foreign Producers,” Variety.com. ht (...)

2Films and TV series also generate their own dedicated tourism activities, whether it be on their official sites6 or through private companies’ like City Breaker’s still active Da Vinci Code-themed tour.7 France is a rather late comer to the full panoply of film-induced tourism as the law facilitating hosting foreign runaway productions on its territory was only voted in 2009.8 Since then Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017), Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (David Yates, 2018), Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010), M:I – Impossible - Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018), Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Guy Ritchie, 2011), Thor (Keneth Branagh, 2011), Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins, 2017) and the TV series Merlin (Shine and BBC Wales, 2008-2012) were among the big-budget productions that have benefited from the enticing French tax rebate.9

• 10 For more on this, see for example the works of Sue Beeton, Kerry Seagrave Daniel Steinhart and Jane (...)
• 11 Busby, G. and Klug, J., “Movie-induced Tourism: The Challenge of Measurement and Other Issues,” Jou (...)

3As studied by several academics10 across a variety of disciplines (for example film studies, economics, geography, adaptation studies, etc.), national legislature’s passage of such tax rebates is expected to reap benefits during and after the shooting of films and TV series on their territories. Film/TV-induced tourism is one of the expected benefits, which has been catalogued into nine different forms, according to Busby and Klug: 11

• 12 Roesch, The Experiences of Film Location Tourists, 14.

4This section presents some of these forms through three interviews with “involved tourism stakeholders”12 taking about different local aspects and impacts of film-induced tourism.

• 13 Simon Hudson and J.R. Brent Ritchie, “Promoting Destinations via Film Tourism: An Empirical Identif (...)
• 14 CNC, “L’impact des tournages sur le tourisme,” and “Cinéma et tourisme font bon ménage à Dunkerque, (...)
• 15 Sarah Kelley, “Tourism, Cinema and TV Series Conference,” Transatlantica 2, (2018). https://journal (...)
• 16 The film sheds light on Operation Dynamo during which the allied troops were evacuated from the Fre (...)

5The interview “Dunkerque and Dunkirk,” which can be said to embody the first four forms of Busby and Klug’s classification, highlights the now widespread example of the impact of the “placement of destinations in movies and its influence on tourism”13 through the case of Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017), a film that benefited from the French tax rebate and led to a case study by the CNC.14 In this interview derived from the 2018 day-conference on Tourism, Film and TV Series,15 Jean-Yves Frémont, town councilor in employment, economic development and tourism, and Sabine l’Hermet, director of Dunkerque tourist office, detail how the locally-shot American blockbuster16 points to the link between the film industry and the role of tourism in local and regional development, notably for the French Hauts-de-France territory and the city where those historical events took place.

• 17 Busby and Klug, “Movie-induced Tourism: The Challenge of Measurement and Other Issues,” 318.

6In the “Bayeux and the Game of Thrones® tapestry” interview, which can be related to the fourth and fifth forms defined by Busby and Klug,17 Fanny Garbe, head of advertising and communication at the French Bayeux Museum, and Séverine Lecart, consumer marketing manager at Tourism Ireland, explain how Bayeux came to benefit from the television series’ Bayeux-inspired tapestry. The now famous Game of Thrones® television series has no physical links to Bayeux nor its surrounding area. But its subsequent Bayeux-inspired tapestry came to be exhibited in Bayeux as its layout visually echoes its ‘ancestor’s’ depiction of the conquest of England in 1066 by the Duke of Normandy. Commissioned by HBO and Tourism Ireland, the Game of Thrones® tapestry has thus a narrative and visual link to Bayeux and is another example of the impact film/TV-induced tourism can have on regional economic development.

• 18 The festival presents itself as “the biggest European event entirely dedicated to television series (...)

7Finally, film/TV-induced tourism can also be linked to festivals, which can be related to the third and ninth forms described in Busby and Klug’s classification. Derived from the exchange also held at the 2018 day-conference on Tourism, Film and TV Series, the interview with Karina Hocquette, education, and audience-development manager for the Séries Mania festival, underlines the festival’s impact on the French Hauts-de-France territory. The city of Lille in Northern France has in fact been hosting Séries Mania18 since 2018 with different Séries Mania-labelled events and performances linked to the best international television series. It has subsequently led to a Series-Mania impact on the tourism industry for the Hauts-de-France region.